A new account by the Yale historian Ned Blackhawk argues that Native peoples shaped the development of American democracy while being dispossessed of their land.
“How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?” This is the provocative question with which Ned Blackhawk opens his important new book, “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History.” A historian at Yale and a member of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, Blackhawk rejects the myth that Native Americans fell quick and easy victims to European invaders. Instead, he asserts that “American Indians were central to every century of U.S. historical development.”
More boldly still, he insists that “Indigenous dispossession facilitated the growth of white male democracy and African American slavery” to constitute America’s historical trifecta of flaws. Built to serve and expand a settler society, the United States limited full citizenship to white men; helped them start new farms on lands taken from Indians; and protected their property rights, including their possession of enslaved people.
All proceeds go towards the United Indians' programs and services which support the urban Native community.